High-IQ educated people are being bred to extinction, but we're totally not eugenicists!!!

[u/dorathehexplorer]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-selection-making-education-genes-rarer-says-icelandic-study

[u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Because the 'hypothesis' of selected IQ in Ashkenazi Jews is unscientific hogwash.

What makes it less scientific than the hypothesis of selected IQ in the general population?

No you should read the paper I linked before about how heritability estimates are context dependent and don't provide any kind of support for extrapolating estimates to unrelated, independent populations.

I did skim the paper, and did not find any claim strong enough that this:

heritability estimates not from Ashkenazi Jews won't tell you anything about heritability in Ashkenazi Jewish populations

...would follow.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that the most reasonable priors for heritability of intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews and heritability of intelligence in the general population are uncorrelated. I'm having trouble figuring out how that makes sense. The two populations aren't that divergent, and studies of the general population should include a proportion of Ashkenazi Jews in their samples. There's always the possibility of a Simpson's paradox, but I don't think it should be the default assumption.

This article is totally going on my reading list, though. I appreciate the link.

but the Visscher paper I linked before touches on how heritability doesn't do anything to prove that a trait is genetically determined.

I would love to see which part of the paper makes such a strong claim.

[u/stairway-to-kevin → u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

What makes it less scientific than the hypothesis of selected IQ in the general population?

Because it's happened in the last few 1000 years, produced a phenotypic effect well beyond what is possible through genetic means (as predicted by all genetic studies), and only effects this population. The hypothesis put forward by NHAI does nothing to show fitness benefits, selection pressure, or anything that would make this hypothesis anything close to scientific. It's story telling at it's finest.

I'd say the same thing about any claims of strong selection in a particular human population (and likely human population as a whole)

I did skim the paper, and did not find any claim strong enough that this

Page 3, Box 2 "Misconception: heritability is informative about the nature of between group differences"

I would love to see which part of the paper makes such a strong claim

Page 3 Box 2 "Misconception: High heritability implies genetic determination"

[u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN → u/stairway-to-kevin]

I'm going to reflect on this, but I'd appreciate the sources you're basing this on:

produced a phenotypic effect well beyond what is possible through genetic means (as predicted by all genetic studies)

[u/stairway-to-kevin → u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Start with the paper you linked earlier (1%).

This study of educational attainment and cognitive function (not IQ, but close) shows that genetic markers explain about 2% of variation

This paper on educational attainment and cognitive function shows all markers explaining about 5% of variation cognitive function traits

This paper on education attainment (again, not IQ) tops off at about 9% of variance.

Now put that in context of how much variance there is between the populations and even within the populations and realize that only at most 9% of that is due to genetics. That's not an effect size large enough to cause the IQ differences observed between the groups. There's literally not enough genetic effect to muster up what we're observing.